So you run ClamWin within a virtual windows box on Ubuntu?

I concur, running without anti-virus is foolish, no matter how safe you surf. The bad guys are always coming up with new ways to deliver virus payloads, and what you know to be a safe practice today may not be safe next week.

I've been running AVG for years now, since AVG 4, now at AVG 8.5. The early versions were CPU-intensive during scans, but that problem seems to have been solved. I have it set to not nag me and not pre-check the links, and it's done a great job for me at a price (free) that cannot be beat.

Sorry, ClamAV within Ubuntu. In my virtual XP I also run anti-virus.

I installed the new version on a new Windows 7 laptop, without link and email scanning. It seems to be working ok so far -- no noticeable problems and it installed fine.

I went to d/l the free AVG 9.0 this morning and they offered a AVG free full 9.0 for a month. Ok so I installed it. Unfortunately it gave me hangups time after time and slow d/l. I uninstalled to to the free version and it too gave hangups. Uninstalled it and all is well. I run Win 7 with FF3.5 and the new beta FF3.x

MisterNice

I run AVG 9 on Windows 7 Ultimate and also do not getting any of the nagware. It runs in the background and it's not intrusive at all.

I've been running AVG for a while and haven't really thought much about it.

I never typically put anything on my VMs and one of them got some malware and it was actually malwarebytes that got rid of it after trying avg. I still run AVG as my av software, but it probably is time to reevaluate.

My boyfriend's company's software has a hard time with most of the more traditional companies like Symantec and Norton. My company runs Symantec endpoint protection and our software runs fine, but his software gets hung up on clients running Symantec.

It is pretty amazing how well viruses are spreading. Several of my hospitals have been hit with something even though they typically have fairly good security practices.

I installed Microsoft's Security Essentials, and the slowness was even more dramatic. E.g., everytime I would work with a file (like simply deleted an email from my pop3 client) there was a noticeable lag.

So now I'm back to AVG free and so far so good. Faster than either Avast or MS.

cblaised:

I don't believe that Microsoft's Security Essentials is slowing your PC.
I have Microsoft's Security Essentials running and also Avira .. and the PC is very fast. Es mentioned before, I had AVG running for some time. When I changed to AVG 9.0 I had some problems and removed it. I have Vista SP2, 64 bit.

Ditto

Are there any notable differences between Avira and MSE?

IME, MSE is noticeably faster than AVG on WinXP SP3 (multiple machines, most about 3-4 years old, some a little newer).

MSE is faster on my machine.

I tried downloading & installing the upgrade, it but ran into some trouble during install. Oh well, still using the older version.

there is something in MSE or defender that run in the background and just EATS up resources. msmpeng.exe. I have had this problem on a couple of machines and cannot figure out what the common element is, for these vista and win7 machines to do this. so, off it went.